


Queen's Gambit

by potted_music



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-22 13:54:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potted_music/pseuds/potted_music
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Gazelle as their only lead on a number of criminal organizations, Roxy understands why Kingsman might want to keep the woman alive. Doesn't mean she has to like it though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Alastair is dead, and Harry is dead, and Chester is dead. Please tell me that she will be dead too, by the time this is over.”

Roxy cannot tear her gaze away from the screen; her breath catches at the incongruity of this. There’s something almost obscene about this particular tortured body clinging stubbornly to life, even as the evening news keep bringing the updated numbers of the casualties of the V-Day. Roxy can see Gazelle’s eyes move behind her closed eyelids: even in the numbness of her medical slumber, the woman is restless, and the tubes hooking her body to life make her resemble an insect, pinned to a cardboard yet still alive. The violent bruise of the spreading poison is fading, a lingering darkness under her skin being slowly washed away by antidotes and plasma.

“Tell me,” Roxy presses, and she can sense Merlin shift uncomfortably in his seat by her side. Then, he chuckles drily.

“As a recruiting strategy, the promise of a bullet to the head once the job is done has little to recommend itself.”

“We don’t have to tell her.”

Merlin’s glasses clatter on the tabletop as he puts them down wearily, and rubs at his eyes. Under any other circumstances, Roxy would have been tempted to feel a modicum of sympathy for the man who believes that he’s holding the world together and wouldn’t spare an hour for petty human necessities like food or sleep. As things stand, however, his insistence on being a function first, and a man second, and an equal disregard for humans behind all other roles smack of nothing but vanity, even if it was this very same choice that earlier earned Merlin Roxy’s respect.

“She’ll want guarantees,” he says as he finally puts his glasses back on, “and we have every reason to offer her anything she might ask her. A thing of the V-Day scale is bound to be a collaborative art project, and we have to make sure that there are no loose ends left hanging. Not to mention their collaborators on side projects.”

“She’s directly responsible for the deaths of millions,” Roxy says, as if she cared about the faceless crowds. “Are you saying that she’ll live to grow old, sipping piña coladas on a tropical island?”

There’s a glint of mischief in Merlin’s eyes, something she has not seen in weeks, as he looks up at her. “Why, do I hear the j-word lurking there, Lady Lancelot? Need I remind you that you are on an entirely wrong career track to raise too much fuss about justice?”

He’s right, of course; he usually is, not that she has to like it.

“I’m the wrong person to be working with her,” she says with finality. “After Alastair-“

“I hope that you’ll soon find that what happened to Alastair actually made you the perfect person for the job,” and, without much of a switch, it’s Merlin the drill sergeant again, a trainer rather than a colleague. She finds the shift annoying rather than disconcerting, as he says with a practiced softness, “Working with her will help to prevent hundreds, possibly thousands of other deaths, so others won’t go through your pain. Of course, you owe them nothing, and you owe Alastair nothing, even if seeing you grow into a brilliant agent would have made him proud, but I think you owe it to yourself, because you have that potential in you.”

“Your complete immorality never ceased to amuse me,” she says, utterly heartfelt; still, she does, if grudgingly, respect him for knowing just when and how to push.

“I live to serve.” After a pause, he adds, “You know that you’re not the only one who lost someone here, right?”

There’d been rumours, of course, among the recruits, not that she cared about the innuendos any more than she cared about those lumbering fools who she knew would wash out soon enough. Now’s the first time when she actually pays the rumours about Merlin and Galahad any mind, and she has to admit that, in retrospect, it does make sense. An acknowledgement of vulnerability, however, angers her more than blatant attempts at manipulation did, since it finally makes Merlin lose his high ground.

“At least tell me that you didn’t put me on the job because both Gazelle and I have vaginas.”

“I solemnly swear,” he says, putting a hand to his chest. “I flattered myself that you know that I’m a better handler than that.”

“I apologize,” she says after a pause. “That was inconsiderate of me.”

She regrets it, of course, not because she might have offended Merlin, but because she can ill afford to show her insecurities, yet the apology is honest enough.

“Get some rest, Lady Lancelot,” he says, turning to a report on his screen.

“I can still work,” she emphatically informs the back of his head.

“Of course you can,” he says, not unkindly. “I will send you the files with your next assignment first thing tomorrow morning.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Sure, do come in,” she drawls as Eggsy invites himself in and plops down on the tiles, with his back against the bath.

“I’m not looking,” he says, covering his eyes with the back of his palm.

“As if there’s much that you haven’t seen yet.”

He lets out a chuckle. “Those dorms, I swear-”

“Still, that’s good preparation for missions such as this last one. Inculcates the idea that your body is an instrument that you should hone, and not pay too much- sorry, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since before the V-Day. Am I rambling? I am rambling.”

Forgetting his earlier promise, he turns towards her swiftly. She flicks water in his face.

“Are you alright though? Sending you on a honeypot mission straight after you saved the world was such a dick move,” he says, his face all scrunched up with worry.

Oh God, she thinks with mounting dread, he’s completely, utterly earnest in his dismay. He went from a boy who wouldn’t shoot his dog to a killing machine without a moment’s hesitation, yet he was uncomfortable with her seducing her way into the retinue of a drug lord who was carving himself a sizable kingdom in the Middle East. She reaches out and musses his hair.

“Eggsy, cut it. I’m perfectly fine. Besides, it’s a job, you’d do the same if you needed to, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. Still, doesn’t sit right. You are not from the kind of family where you’d be expected to do that sorta thing, normally, yeah?”

She tilts her head to the side, wondering briefly over the difference. Did Eggsy think that he deserved all the less savoury aspects of the job because of his background, or was he genuinely happier to endure whatever unpleasantness life might throw at him rather than watch his friends do the same? With a sigh, she pulls him into a wet hug; he makes perfunctory protesting noises against her bare shoulder, but then relaxes into the embrace. 

She chose Eggsy for much the same reasons that she chose her dog, Roxy muses: he was lonely and out of place, and that made him easy to train, and loyal. Doesn’t mean that she didn’t grow to like him, or the dog.

“It was alright,” she says, finally letting him go. “I got all the information we needed, and then, it was a good clean kill, and I was out of the compound before anyone noticed. If anything, I’m proud of myself. There’s power in sex, and you shouldn’t scowl at any means of getting the job done.”

Eggsy moves to protest, but she cuts him short. “You wouldn’t normally shoot three dozens of people before dinner either, would you?”

“Yeah, I’d wait for after the desserts,” he flashes her a smile, but then grows serious under her gaze. “I’m proud of what I did on V-Day, as I should be. That what you are saying?”

She nods. “And I’d rather take all the honeypots from now on till forever than have to deal with Gazelle.”

He hesitates for longer than she would have expected. “I don’t know,” he finally says, “she seemed okay, when I talked to her yesterday. Mostly drugged out of her mind, but, y’know-”

“Eggsy, she tried to kill you!” She yelps and tries to stand up; Eggsy turns away theatrically to protect her largely fictitious modesty.

“Yeah, sure, and I almost did,” he hands her a towel without looking back, “Did kill her, I mean. Still, she lost her mentor.”

“You lost your mentor too, because of her,” Roxy doesn’t hesitate to rub it in. “That doesn’t mean that you are somehow magically in the same boat.”

The tips of Eggsy’s ears go red. It’s a toss-up, Roxy swears, on what will eventually get him killed: his tendency to believe the best in people, or her exasperation with it. She shrugs on her dressing gown, and turns Eggsy around. She has not told this to anyone yet, so she tries to spit the words out as fast as she can, before they congeal in her throat and make her choke.

“Alastair- Percival, my mentor, was my big brother. I called him before the V-Day started, and told him to lock himself away from everyone. The downside is, there are very few locks a Kingsman cannot pick.”

“I didn’t know,” Eggsy whispers. “You don’t have to-”

“He killed his fiancée, and then, after it was all over, he killed himself.”

Eggsy tries to pull her closer, but she stays at arm’s length, registering absent-mindedly how her fingers go white where they are clutching at Eggsy’s shoulders. “I’m angry at the tosser. His fiancée was a waste of oxygen on the best of days, and it was so not worth-”

She turns away fast; tears tingle at her eyelids, but don’t come. She’d read all about the stages of grief, and knows that anger will pass, but she wishes that it won’t. She has grown to like the feeling of rage lurking just below the surface, looking for a way out.


	3. Chapter 3

“Right,” Gazelle says, pulling up on her bed, “I want my legs back.”

“And I want my brother back. We cannot all get what we want.” She sets herself up to fail, Roxy knows, and regrets the words almost before they’ve left her mouth. Gazelle flashes her a sliver of a smile.

“Well, the difference between you and me is, I have something you want, which brings us back to the point: I want my legs back. Ten, nine-”

Of course, Roxy inspected them when Merlin first handed her the bag: the padding, the blades; in her life that is slowly morphing into a spy movie, they look out of place, like something cut out of a horror poster and superimposed over reality without much care for the ragged edges. Their tech department has been working around the clock to identify the material they are made of. Grudgingly, she hands Gazelle the bag, and looks away while she adjusts her prosthetics. 

Gazelle stands up with a light clang, like a door clicking shut; this is it, Roxy thinks, the official beginning of her new assignment. Gazelle smiles reassuringly, and, without so much as a warning, swings the blade on her left foot in a swift up-kick, barely missing Roxy’s forehead. Roxy flinches back against her will, reaching for her gun.

“If this is to work,” Gazelle says, amused and goofy, “you have to trust me. You have to assume that I don’t intend to kill you for now, and that I’m competent enough not to kill you by accident.”

“Your idea of a trust fall leaves a lot to be desired.”

“Shit out of luck you are,” Gazelle says with a light shrug.

The blades leave messy scuffmarks on the oak floors as they walk towards the underground gym, Roxy leading the way. She hopes that the offending boards will be changed as soon as Gazelle is out of the door, but for now, the woman seems to take pleasure in leaving a mark.

“Do you want to spar?” Gazelle asks, surveying the gym with an obviously appreciative look of a connoisseur.

Roxy has seen the V-Day footage from Eggsy’s glasses, and it’s tempting, floating as she is on rancid rage. She stretches, goes up and down on her toes before she answers. “We’d better start on that trust-building. Let’s practice containing a group of enemy-”

Gazelle spins into a whirl before Roxy can finish speaking, moving around the perimeter of the room, her kicks and dodges delineating the position of the imaginary enemy group. She makes up in speed for what she lacks, or must lack, in precision, her feet barely touching the ground. There’s an excessiveness to Gazelle’s movements that cannot be described other than as art, the redundancy of the sheer joy in her body’s efficiency, and in violence. She’s not jaunty like Eggsy, and she has none of the controlled ferocity of Roxy’s movements. It’s probably exhausting too, especially since she’s barely out of sickbay, wasteful even, yet if Gazelle survived this far, it could mean only one thing: it works. If she never felt the need to prepare for a long fight, her opponents must have been dead before she broke a sweat. It’s not the style that Roxy would have ever chosen herself, but she could definitely get used to watching it. With a frisson of delight, Roxy lunges forward, propelling herself into Gazelle’s trajectory.

She dodges a blade with a grin, and kicks out at an imaginary opponent as Gazelle turns the other way, letting her guard her back. For a second, Roxy closes her eyes, trying to soak up the scene, to learn Gazelle’s moves with a precision that reaches beyond rational calculations, to guess her trajectory from the sounds of her breaths and the swish of the blades. This almost earns her a punch to the shoulder, which she dodges, diving below.

Gazelle’s weapons are built for movement, the complex balancing act of a mercury bead that doesn’t, nor can, stay in place; the one thing that they aren’t built for is steadiness. Roxy tries to catch one with the side of her foot, and almost manages. To her credit, Gazelle catches on instantly, and tries to back off, only to hit a mannequin. Roxy smirks inwardly: that was criminal stupidity, trusting someone enough to lose track of the sector that your partner was supposed to be covering. Without wasting a second, Gazelle spins upwards, using it for leverage, and lunges at Roxy.

That’s smart, Roxy thinks through breathless exhilaration that danger always brings on; all the jumps and upswings intending to distract an opponent from the fact that Gazelle’s vulnerable to low kicks, that she can easily be brought down if you can only manage to trip her up. Roxy’s not aiming for elegance as she drops to the ground, well below the trajectory of the blade, and kicks the other one out from under Gazelle right as she lands. 

Without waiting to check if it worked, Roxy rolls to the side, hitting her elbow on the mirror wall. Not that that minor pang of pain counts for much; she’s on her feet before Gazelle even hits the ground. Roxy helps her up with a smug smile.

“Most are probably too scared of you to notice,” she says, conciliatory. “And I’ll be there to take care of those that are not.”

“They all are. Are we done for the day?” Gazelle says in a tone implying that she expects no answer, and kicks at the mannequin. Its head, cut off neatly, clatters to the floor with a dull thud. 

“Now that you count as one of us, would you mind refraining from wanton destruction of property?” Merlin’s disembodied voice rings out from the speakers before Roxy has a chance to answer.

“Is he always this overbearing when it comes to his toys?”

“He hasn’t even started,” Roxy answers, rolling her eyes before she checks herself, schooling her expression into polite disdain. “Still, you wouldn’t be here if not for him, so I highly recommend you remain courteous.”

As she escorts Gazelle back to the hospital wing, Roxy notes that her steps are heavier than on the walk to the gym. Her preferred style _is_ taxing, and it smacks of vanity and arrogance. However, Roxy has to admit, however grudgingly and bitterly, that Gazelle’s moves were indeed beautiful.


End file.
